Semester: Spring 2019

Japanese Popular Media and Culture

Instructor/Title Mark Hollstein, Ph.D./Associate Professor

Course Description: This course examines Japanese history, society and culture through the lens of popular media. It focuses primarily on , , and television drama. However, a variety of other media—such as pop music, theatre and live-action film—will be discussed as they relate to these three main media. The course will begin with a look at the historical development of comic art in the Edo and Meiji periods, with primary attention paid to how the confluence of traditional Japanese art and Western techniques and style helped shape today’s popular media. Next, we will examine the uses of manga and anime in the wartime and postwar periods by focusing on their development from propaganda to works of mature social criticism. Of particular interest will be how these works both reflect and shape the debate over Japan’s postwar identity. We will then examine the means of production, distribution and consumption of manga and anime in Japan and the relationship between popular art and high art in Japan. Our attention will then turn to television dramas in Japan. We will examine their relationship with manga and anime while discussing how they deal with and influence a variety of current social issues including treatment of the physically handicapped, the death penalty and LGBT rights. The course will finish with a look at the popularity and uses of popular media abroad and how they are influencing foreign understandings and attitudes about Japan.

Section 2

Course Objectives: This course will enable students to go beyond the entertainment value of Japanese popular media to discover their social and historical significance. Upon completion of this course, students should also be able to explain the major ideological and ontological debates that have shaped Japan’s postwar society, and discuss some of the relevant social issues facing Japan today.

Section 3

Lecture 1: Course Introduction

Development of Modern Manga and Anime

Lecture 2: Read: (0) “The Unseamly Silverpiped Swingers,” by Santo Kyōden, from Manga of the Floating World, by Adam L. Kern.

Lecture 3: Read: (1) “A Thousand Years of Manga,” by Frederik L. Schodt, from Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. Look Over: (2) “The Introduction to Mr. Punch,” From The Great Genius of Mr. Punch, by Jozef Togala.

Lecture 4: Read: (4) “Theorizing Manga: Nationalism and Discourse on the Role of Wartime Manga” by Rei Okamoto Inouye, From Mechademia Volume 4.

Lecture 5: Read: (5) “: A tribute to the God of Comics” by Frederik L. Schodt, from from Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics.

－1－

Lecture 6: Read "Tormenting Affairs with Animation," by Natsu Power, from God of Comics: Osama Tezuka and the creation of Post-WWII Manga.

Lecture 7: Read: (5.3) “Movie in a Book,” by Natsu Onoda Powers, from God of Comics: Osama Tezuka and the creation of Post-WWII Manga Optional Reading: (6) and (7) “Chapter I, Once Upon a Time,” in Princess Knight, by Tezuka Osamu; and “All the Way from the Future” and “I Can’t Take a Test Without ‘Anki-pan,” in Doraemon: Gadget Cat From the Future, by Fujiko F. Fujio.

Gekiga and Japan’s Postwar Identity

Lecture 8: Read: (8) “From a Darker Place” by Paul Gravett, from Manga: 60 Years of Japanese Comics. Optional Reading: (9) “The Terateogenous Cystoma” in Black Jack, by Tezuka Osamu.

Lecture 9: Read: (10) and (10.1) “Abandon the Old in ” and “Eel” by Tatsumi Yoshiharu, from and Other Stories;. and “Screw Style” by Tsuge Yoshiharu, from The Comics Journal no. 250.

Optional Readings: (11) and (12) “Tatasumi’s Long Journey” by Kai-Ming Cha, from Publishers Weekly August 1, 2006, and “On Top of the Mountain: The Influential Manga of Yoshiharu Tsuge” by Beatrice Marechal, from The Comics Journal:Special Edition Volume 5.

Lecture 10: Read: (13) Excerpt from , by Keiji Nakazawa.

Lecture 11: Read: (12) “Remaking Master Narratives: Anime Confronts History” and “No More Words: Barefoot Gen, Grave of the Fireflies and ‘Victims’ History” by Susan J. Napier, from Anime: From Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle. Optional Reading: (15) “Transcending the Victim’s History: Takahata Isao’s Grave of the Fireflies” by Wendy Goldberg, from Mechademia, Volume 4.

Lecture 12: Read: (16) “Cleansing History, Cleansing Japan: Kobayashi Yoshinori’s Analects of War and Japan’s Revisionist Revival” by Rebecca Clifford, Nissan Occasional Paper Series No. 35. Optional Reading: (17) “Three Views of the Rising Sun, Obliquely: Keiji Nakazawa’s A-bomb, Osama Tezuka’s Adolf, and Yoshinori Kobayashi’s Apologia” by Sheng-mei Ma, from Mechademia, Volume 4.

Lecture 13: Read: (17.1) “Oishimbo’s Fukushima Elegy: Grasping for Truth about Radiation in a Food Manga,” By Lauri Brau, from Fukushima and the Arts: Negotiating Nuclear Disaster.

Lecture 14: Quiz 1 and Discussion

Manga and Anime as Art and Business

－2－ Lecture 15: Read: (18) “Making Murakami” by Paul Schimmel, from Murakami, Los Angeles : Museum of Contemporary Art ; New York : Rizzoli, 2007.

Lecture 16: Read: (20) “The Manga Production Cycle” by Sharon Kinsella, from Adult Manga.

Lecture 17: The Anime Production Process

Lecture 18: Read: (20.1) “Miyazaki and Takahata Anime Cinema,” by Tse-Yue G. Hu, from Frames of Anime: Culture and Image-Building.

Lecture 19: Read: (21) “Interpreting Oshin—War History and Women in Modern Japan” by Paul A.S. Harvey, from Women Media and Consumption in Japan.

Lecture 20: Read: (23) “The Representation of Femininity in Japanese Television Dramas of the 1990s” by ITO Mamoru, from Feeling Asian Modernities: Transnational Consumption of Japanese TV Dramas.

Lecture 21: Read: (24) “Empowering Love: The Intertextual Author of Ren’ai Dorama” by Eva Tsai, from Feeling Asian Modernities: Transnational Consumption of Japanese TV Dramas.

Lecture 22: Quiz: 2 and Discussion

Lecture 23: Read: (25) “The Mass Media and Japan’s Invisible Death Chamber Drama” by Mark Hollstein

Lecture 24: Read: (25.5) Recent newspaper articles about the death penalty in Japan.

Lecture 25: Read: (26) “Chapter 1: The Black Ships Arrive,” and “Chapter 2: Tempera Sushi,” in My Brother’s Husband, by Gengoroh Tagame, Patheon, 2017.

The Power of Japanese Drama, Manga, and Anime Abroad

Lecture 26: Read: (26.1). “Cultural Contact with Japanese Dramas: Modes Reception and Narrative Transparency” by Dong-Hoo Lee, from Feeling Asian Modernities: Transnational Consumption of Japanese TV Dramas. Optional Reading: (27) “Popular Cultural Capital and Cultural Identity: Young Korean Women Women’s Cultural Appropriation of Japanese TV Dramas” by Dong-Hoo Lee, from East Asian Pop Culture: Analyzing the Korean Wave.

Lecture 27: Read: (28) and (29) “Winter Sonata and Cultural Practices of Active Fans in Japan: Considering Middle-Aged Women” by Yoshitaka Mori and “Touring ‘Dramatic Korea’ Japanese Women as Viewers of Hanryu Dramas and Tourists on Hanryu Tours” by Yukie Hirata, both from East Asian Pop Culture: Analyzing the Korean Wave.

Lecture 28: Read: (30) “The Americanization of Anime and Manga Negotiating Popular Culture” by Antonia Levi, from Cinema Anime:Critical Engagements with Japanese Animation.

－3－ Optional Reading: (31) “Differing Destinations: Cultural Identification, Orientalism, and Soft Power in the Twenty-first Century Anime Fandom” by Susan Napier in From Impressionism to Anime.

Lecture 29: Read: (32) “Japan’s Growing Cultural Power: The Example of Manga in France” by Jean-Marie Bouissou, Reading Manga: Local and global Perceptions of Japanese Comics, Leipziger Universitätverlag, pp.149-165, 2006. Optional Reading: (33) “Speech by Minister for Foreign Affairs Taro Aso at Digital Hollywood University,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs: https://www.mofa.go.jp/announce/fm/aso/speech0604-2.html

Lecture 30: Review/Final Essays Due

Reading Materials: All reading assignments will be available in the “Assignments” section of Blackboard from which they can be downloaded and printed or read online.

Section 4

Grading: Quizzes: 50% Essay: 15 % Final Exam: 25% Class Participation: 10%

Section 5

Quizzes/Final Exam: Two quizzes and a final exam will be given over the course of the semester; they will be comprised of 25 true-or-false and multiple-choice questions. You will have about 35-40 minutes to answer, after which we will correct and discuss the answers in class.

Essay: A set of essay question will be provided on Blackboard at least on month before the due date. You will be asked to pick one question to answer in four to five to six (about 1,000-1,200) words) typed pages. In your essay you should demonstrate that you have done the appropriate assigned readings by paraphrasing and directly quoting the author(s). You do not have to do any independent research for this assignment. Your completed responses should be uploaded to the essay assignment page on Blackboard by the due date.

Course Readings and Other Materials: There will be a reading assignment for each day of class. These can be found on Blackboard in the “Assignments” folder. PowerPoint presentations used in class, the course syllabus, instructions for the final paper and other relevant course materials will also be posted in either the “Assignments” or “Documents” folders on Blackboard.

Participation: Attendance will generally be taken by circulating a roll during class. If you come late, it is your responsibility to make sure you sign the roll. If you must be absent, please talk to me before the class you will miss to see if your absence can be excused. Your score in this category depends upon BOTH regular attendance and regular participation.

－4－